Stealth

I watched a documentary the other evening featuring a team from the West who went deep into the uncharted New Guinea jungle. They were in search of a remote mountain Stone Age people who were untouched by modern times.

Trekking through the lush unmapped jungle was grueling and dangerous—from headhunters to poisonous snakes. When the team reached their destination, the tribesmen were not pleased to see them. Eventually, although there was an agreement to have a peaceful interchange, the air was rife with tension.

The tribe lived in a seemingly unbearable and inhospitable environment: stifling humidity, pestering flies, mosquitos, dangerous animals, diseases, and so on. They did live in houses built some 60 feet above ground; apparently, flies and mosquitoes did not often soar that high. These tribal people mostly segregated men and women, and they did not see a correlation between sex and children.

Finding food was the tribe’s main activity; the villagers ate most anything. If you were offered one of their ‘tasty’ delicacies like skewered rat, you accepted if you wanted to keep your head.

There were birds on the menu. No big game in this jungle, and no invention of the wheel either, which would be of no use in the nearly impenetrable harsh thicket.

Why were these Stone Age people living in this hostile environment in the first place? Yes, humanity does have a knack for adapting, but why adapt to such a dangerous way of life? Did ancestors from the remote past think that this was a good place to settle?

Except for some sort of payback in raiding another village and headhunting, it didn’t seem that any of the tribe’s people ventured out beyond their jungle turf to explore the world beyond. These folk, born and mind controlled from birth, accepted reality, and its seeming limitations as it was.

Are we modern humans any different? We are born to believe that we are a member of a country, a region, a clan, a belief system, a religion, a philosophy, name your dogma. How many question this cultural conceit? How many do anything about it?

The true artist breaks down the mindless artifices of civilization, and must pay the price for doing so.

Post Pop

More observations on the road:

Yesterday, I was in the left hand turn lane waiting for a long red light to give the green arrow for the turn. There, on the road divider to my left was a woman bundled in a big coat with a dog at her side, and a hand-scrawled sign that read: I’m traveling on a prayer. Of course, she was panhandling. There was a long line of cars behind and in front of me. It was a cold, windy day in Santa Fe.

I don’t often make such handouts because the panhandler isn’t offering something in exchange. But, I’m not stuck in my own dogma, either. For example, some time ago a young couple had parked themselves in front of a large discount store. Instead of begging, they were selling tacos stuffed with bacon. I’m not a bacon eater. Still, this ragged couple needed some help. I gave them $5 bucks, and said, please keep the tacos.

The lady with the dog stood on the windy road divider waiting. No one was offering alms. So, I waved her over, and gave her a buck, saying this is for your doggie. She blessed me and went back to the road divider. Then, suddenly, as if orchestrated on cue—one, two, three, four, and then five car windows in front of me opened in a cascade of generosity, waving paper money for her, which she promptly retrieved, blessing those folks too, I’m sure.

Finally, the green light arrow came on for that left turn. I drove passed the lady and her dog, we waved, and I was off.

Tron Poster, 1982

The new Tron Legacy film has recently been released.

I wrote about the original Tron movie in An Artist Empowered. Here is the excerpt:

There was another film that explored reality and truth nearly twenty years before The Matrix (1999) delved into the same metaphysical territory. In the 1982 movie, Tron, a young computer programmer gets sucked into the virtual world of a computer where he must fight for his life playing life-or-death video games run by the evil Master Control Program (MCP).

With the aid of a good warrior program named Tron, the programmer must put a stop to the MCP and set things right in the computer world before returning to his own reality.

The programmer meets many different programs (who have human form) inside the computer; these programs are looking to live and work within a free system without the tyranny of the MCP.

The programs in the computer machine are called programs; of course, this is a metaphor for people who are programmed to behave in a certain way. Tron presents us with another intriguing concept: the different programs that inhabit this virtual reality have a mythology about the users. Do they exist? The programs believe they do. Users, like the programmer, are the gods who created them.

Of course, the MCP sees the users as a threat to its ultimate authority, so it is eager to have the programs renounce the users, which it deems a superstitious and hysterical belief.

It is easier to see the machinery and values of another culture than it is to evaluate your own society where you can’t see what is going on because of acculturation, assimilation, and an ethnocentric bias—unless, of course, you can break free from social conditioning—the MCP—and see reality from the outside in, or, in the case of Tron, from the inside out.

Mr. Fox by Erwin A. Thompson

This darling fox (a genuine slice of Americana) whittled by ninety-something Erwin A. Thompson arrived in my mailbox the other day, a gift thoughtfully arranged by his daughter, Janet Riehl—the karma burner behind Riel Life: Village Wisdom for the 21st Century. 

I had told Janet that Erwin’s whittles of animals reminded me of native american fetishes—charms with magical powers.

Janet and her father work together on projects, including a major 4-disc boxed CD set called Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry & Music.

If you’re up for a poignant trek into the heartland, then you can find out more about remarkable Erwin, how he came to whittle his little treasures, and about gratitude. Click on this link and learn.

The Athlete

Seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for allegedly lying to Congress about using steroids and growth hormone. The criminal case writes a new chapter in one of Major League Baseball’s worst scandals, the rampant use of the banned substances.

This legal matter is yet another red herring; does anyone in the room believe that if they took steroids or a human growth hormone, they would develop the pitching prowess of Clemens? Sure, these substances might harm your health, but to ban them because it might give one an advantage (level playing field notwithstanding) is ridiculous and hypocritical.

The Scientist

According to believers, ‘Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA more than 50 years ago.’ Whether this questionable and anecdotal account took place or not is irrelevant.

Regardless of how it happened, we do know this discovery was the result of ingenuity coupled with passion: a circumstance of a prepared mind meeting intuitive information. We thank Crick and his research associate, James Watson, for being sufficiently aware in March of 1953 to ‘see’ what was in the genie’s bottle: the molecular structure of DNA. Unless you were looking for it, how many would have recognized the double helix, the genetic instructions, or blue- print of life, if they saw it standing on their kitchen table? How many in the presence of an innovation in art would recognize the breakthrough for what it was before it was sanctioned by the powers that be?

The Artist

The topic of drugs and art is a volatile one; and we know that many an artist has, with disastrous results, turned to drink or substance abuse to cope with feeling blocked, rejected, or even accepted. If you think that ingesting substances will make you a better artist or give you courage, then you don’t yet see a clear picture of what I am writing about in this book (An Artist Empowered).

An artist in dharma is already ‘perfect’ because he acknowledges the source of his gift. Nothing from the outside can improve upon the inner harmony that already exists. If you have a gift of art, you are then also charged with a duty: you must protect that gift from any vice that would destroy it.